Most thieves start off small, and then when they get away with it they get greedy and go for more & more, and that's when they get caught.
I was Corporate Controller for a small hotel management company. I noticed and unusually high amount of credit card chargebacks (credits) at the Dallas hotel. I spoke to the hotel controller about it and when she investigated she found that a large number of the credits were going to the same CC#. I suspected it was one of the accounting clerks, they have access to the checked out guests' folios (records), and we found that one of the clerks was doing many of the CC credits, making notes claiming that the guest had complained the room was dirty or room service took to long and would give them a credit, always to the same CC#, which we assumed was his. The final step was I went to the hotel and after work I went through his emails, which I was allowed to do as we had a written policy that hotel computers we not to be used for personal business. I found a lot of emails to a lady making arrangements for dinner & hotel. And then I found it: an email marked Urgent, telling his lady friend they had to cancel that night's plans as "the wife's parents are coming over for dinner".
The two factors in theft & fraud are: Opportunity, and Motive. His access to guest records to give credits was his opportunity, and cheating on his wife was his motive, he was crediting his own CC to cover the expenses of his affair. And he had started of small, a hundred or two per month, and when it went undetected he was now up to almost a thousand a month, which was when we did detect it.
We confronted him at work the next day, he confessed and we called the police who took him away.
